Goodbye China, Hello Hong Kong

We've been in Hong Kong for a few days now, but I thought we should write a little bit about departing China.

We left Guilin on Wednesday (21st August) night, on our final sleeper train, heading to Shenzhen. It was a strange journey as we were eager to get off the train and head for the border crossing but we were also quite wistful about our time in China coming to an end. We had, after all, spent the last 6 months there. As strange and crazy as China was, it had been our home for those months and we had begun to get used to its strange ways. With that in mind, we were excited to be heading for Hong Kong and looking forward to meeting up with Darryl's parents.

We arrived at Shenzhen a little bit late (shocking!), got off the train and before we knew it we were through border control and in Hong Kong. There was a brief moment whilst we were standing in the queue where we had a minor worry that maybe we hadn't calculated the days right or maybe they calculated it differently meaning we had over stayed. But the worry was for nothing. No fines for us!

Sadly Hong Kong recently decided that it didn't believe in stamping passports anymore and instead staple a small piece of paper in to your passport.

It has been a unique experience living in China for the last 6 months. It definitely makes you appreciate certain things from home more, but it has given us a greater understanding of China that I think we wouldn't have picked up on if we had only visited briefly.

Hopefully we will return in the future to further explore this vast country.